1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an improved data processing system and, more particularly, to management of errors within the data processing system.
2. Description of Related Art
The xe2x80x9cInternetxe2x80x9d is a worldwide network of computers Today, the Internet is made up of more than 65 million computers in more than 100 countries covering commercial, academic and government endeavors. Originally developed for the U.S. military, the Internet became widely used for academic and commercial research. Users had access to unpublished data and journals on a huge variety of subjects. Today, the Internet has become commercialized into a worldwide information highway, providing information on every subject known to humankind.
The Internet""s surge in growth in the latter half of the 1990s was twofold. As the major online services (AOL, CompuServe, etc.) connected to the Internet for e-mail exchange, the Internet began to function as a central gateway. A member of one service could finally send mail to a member of another. The Internet glued the world together for electronic mail, and today, the Internet mail protocol is the world standard.
Secondly, with the advent of graphics-based Web browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape Navigator, and soon after, Microsoft""s Internet Explorer, the World Wide Web took off. The Web became easily available to users with PCs and Macs rather than only scientists and hackers at UNIX workstations. Delphi was the first proprietary online service to offer Web access, and all the rest followed. At the same time, new Internet service providers rose out of the woodwork to offer access to individuals and companies. As a result, the Web has grown exponentially providing an information exchange of unprecedented proportion. The Web has also become xe2x80x9cthexe2x80x9d storehouse for drivers, updates and demos that are downloaded via the browser.
Web content provided to browser users is stored on web or enterprise servers connected to the Internet. Many businesses utilize their enterprise servers, not just to advertise or provide information about their business, but also to conduct business. In fact, many businesses are purely xe2x80x9cInternetxe2x80x9d or dot com businesses. In conducting their xe2x80x9con-linexe2x80x9d businesses, these companies rely on their enterprise servers to be xe2x80x9cupxe2x80x9d and functioning to receive orders for products from customers. Failures of these enterprise servers may and often do result in lost revenue due to lost sales for the business. For many businesses, lost revenue from just a few hours of down time for the enterprise server may be catastrophic.
Therefore, time is critical to the development and serviceability of enterprise server. The amount and frequency of transactions performed on enterprise servers will continue to increase dramatically. The workload of these e-business engines will prove very stressful for any system or piece of hardware and downtime will be eminent. Therefore, the need for an enterprise server to maintain high Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS), becomes very important to an Information Technology (IT) Specialist or customer. In addition to RAS, faster system development cycles will be necessary for any business, to compete in this arena.
Whether it is at a customer site or in the lab, too much time is wasted diagnosing failure modes or problems. In many cases, this is simply because we are unaware of when a particular error occurs. Therefore, there is a need for a mechanism to notify an operator or a developer when a specific error has occurred.
The present invention provides a method, system, and apparatus for monitoring errors within a data processing system. In one embodiment an error notification system receives an indication of notification conditions and actions from a user. The system then searches for the specified conditions. Responsive to the occurrence of the specified condition, the system performs specified actions and sends a notification to a user. The specified actions may include, for example, rebooting the computer or generating a web page of information regarding the occurrence of the condition. The notification may be sent to a user via, for example, e-mail.